


Defiance

by evitably



Category: Original Work, The Princess in the Chest (fairy tale)
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Ghosts, Mystery, Violence against women, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evitably/pseuds/evitably
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The princess's defiance comes at a great cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defiance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crumblingwalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumblingwalls/gifts).



> Based on the following fairytales: [La Ramée and the Phantom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ram%C3%A9e_and_the_Phantom) & The Princess in the Chest [1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_in_the_Chest) | [2](http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/406.htm).
> 
> Many thanks to CK and RM for their support while writing! It was much appreciated.

On the eve before her fifteenth birthday, the princess vanished.

"Perhaps she's gone to the pond?" suggested her maid, except the spot where the princess would spend hours in the company of the fish while she embroidered was empty.

"To the galleries, maybe?" said another while she wrung her hands, referring to the empty spaces above the halls -- but the princess was not there.

"Surely she's gone to the apple grove," said a third with conviction, for the princess was fond of quiet and loneliness, and the apple grove had served as her sanctuary for more than one occasion. They had searched for hours amongst the apple trees, calling for her and begging for her to return, but only silence met their pleas, for the princess was not in the apple grove, either.

Worried and scared, her servants gathered 'round and agreed that next they should approach the king with the news, so that he might assign others to join the search for the missing princess.

It was quite late in the afternoon by then, and the throne room was nearly empty when they arrived. "Sire," said the head maid to the king after offering him a deep curtsy. "I bear terrible news. The princess has vanished, and we cannot find her."

"We'd already heard," said the king.

"Has His Majesty sent someone to look for her?" asked the maid.

"No," the king replied. "All we can do is pray for her safe return."

And the maid, who'd stood too far from the king's throne to look at the king's face, did not see the spread of the shadows under his eyes or the lines that marred his skin. And she did not know that should she head back to the princess's room and search further, she would find the signs of struggle -- drops of what looked like dark red wine smeared across the floor, a chip on the underside of a table, the tear in the wall rug where someone had pulled too hard.

"As His Majesty says," said the maid, and curtsied once more.

*

As the bell struck midnight on the night of her birthday, the princess awoke and found that she could not remember having gone to sleep.

The bed on which she lay was too hard and the room was too dark and silent. This was not the feather-stuffed mattress she was used to, no moonlight filtered through the windows, nor was there the soft snoring of a servant sleeping in the corner of her room to assure she received all that she asked for.

She attempted to sit, but her head hit a surface above, and the princess discovered that she was not, in fact, in a bed, but rather -- and this was odd -- in a long, narrow box that shut out all sound and light.

The princess was not particularly known for her patience or gentleness, but rather her opinionated nature and rash actions. Although she was not a bad princess by any stretch of the word, she had been known to cause difficulties for her caretakers and parents when she did not know how to stay put.

And so when her head met the wooden surface that covered the space where she slept, she did not lie back down but pressed on in an attempt to push it open. There was resistance, at first, but bit by bit she found herself rising through the wood and then through stone, for she was now a ghost and therefore could easily pass through any object which stood in her way.

At any other time, the princess might've paused to ponder what she'd done or how she'd come to be sleeping in a side room of the royal chapel, but she was distracted by the sight of a young man in uniform that stood in front of where she rose.

She didn't know the young man's function, nor did she care. It did not matter that he'd been placed there to honor her after her death and pray for her soul. All that she knew was that here stood a man, and while she could not remember why, she did not want him there.

Back when she still lived, the princess had not had claws or fangs, nor had she ever experienced bloodlust. But now that she wanted the man gone, she could feel claws at the tips of her fingers and fangs at her lips, and then her sight was awash with red and she did not know anything else for some time.

When she came back to herself there was no one in the chapel but her, and her ghostly hands were painted red. She stared at them in confusion, and then, as dawn started spreading beyond the chapel's painted windows, she disappeared.

The next night, the princess was not as confused to find herself in the same coffin, and neither was she surprised by the lone sentinel that stood guard in her honor.

Later, she would be able to piece what had happened during her bloodlust: the elongating claws, the protruding fangs, the fear of the sentinel who froze in place and then begged her not to harm him.

But that did not stop her, and by the time dawn came and she faded from view, the man was dead and torn and spread thin in the air.

Such were the princess's nights from there on: she would rise from her grave and attack the young man who'd been assigned as sentinel, each more frightened and unwilling than the last, and would not regain her senses until he was dead. Occasionally she would get the barest hint of an image, a mere whisper against her memory: a demand, of sorts, and the sharp sting of skin hitting skin, and the sudden flare of pain.

Those were her nights.

Her days she could not remember, for she was trapped in the sleep of the dead until the clock struck midnight and she awoke, free to wander the chapel until dawn.

A year had passed in such routine before something had set out to break it. Several nights after she was to have had her sixteenth birthday, three days before she was to have been married, there was no sentinel standing by her grave.

The princess turned her head this way and that, then walked closer to one of the painted windows and attempted to peer outside. Alas, she was not tall enough to see much beyond the wide windowsill no matter how much she tried, and so she turned away, unsure of what to do next -- she hadn't yet had a night free of rage.

For hours she explored the chapel with a thoroughness she was not allowed as a child: the space below the wooden benches, rubbed pale with age and use; the magnificent fresco that surrounded the image of Holy Mary as she mourned her dead son; the pulpit and altar, carved with patterns of grapevines along their legs. She ran her palms across the carvings and the paints and the nicks of the woods, over the window panes and rugs that covered some of the walls.

Touch was not as she remembered; she was no longer part of the living, and this altered the way she perceived her surroundings. Now her hands would go through wood and cloth, her eyes turned color flat, and the air smelled cold, uninviting, and speckled with blood.

Suddenly, she heard a cough, a gasp, and then the sound of someone attempting to stop breathing.

The sound had come from the direction of the altar, where she'd spent time studying the carvings and learning them from the inside out. She walked lightly on the floor with her ghostly feet in the altar's direction, but she must've made some noise, for someone shot out from behind it in an attempt to escape.

"Please --" he choked out when he saw her, frozen in place just as the many other sentinels before him have. But morning dawned before she could ignore his plea, and so she disappeared, leaving him to be the first to have emerged alive from the chapel in the morning.

The night after, the princess found herself alone again. She looked behind the altar, and under the benches, and behind the doors that led to the back rooms, and found nothing. Perhaps tonight she really was alone in the chapel?

Movement from the pulpit caught her eye as she pondered the matter. The princess shrieked in rage, a shock of red descending over her view, as she raced towards the cowardly sentinel who'd bested her the previous night. She intended to pluck him out of the pulpit for reasons she could not remember and rid the world of him, but she could not make it inside: attempting to touch the borders of the pulpit stung her hand and sent her reeling back.

Regaining her balance took several attempts. She'd been hurt, she realized with wonder, turning her palm down and then up, examining it to see if anything had changed from its dead, pearly translucency.

There had been a hand in her memory for as long as she'd been dead -- lively and pink, warm and hurtful, striking against her cheek and --

and --

and she'd attempted to catch the rug on the wall, but it tore. A flare of of pain that turned to darkness, from which the princess awoke in a coffin.

There had been anger, too, and shouting. She could remember shouting.

Another movement from the sentinel drew her attention back to him, and she clenched her palm into a fist and hissed up at him. 

She did not try reaching up to him again. When morning came, she did not fight it.

*

The following night, that same man was in the pulpit. His face was familiar now to the princess, a mass of bold lines and faded colors compared to the sentinels before whose featured bled into one another.

The princess didn't rush to the pulpit like the night before, but rather circled it over and over again, throwing books and ornaments in the hope they would drive the sentinel out. As soon as she'd run of things to throw, she went to the other side of the chapel and picked them up so she could throw them again.

The sentinel had sworn, mocked and laughed in her face, and once she could take it no more, rage flooded her senses and she threw herself at him.

Air rushed against her body and through her skin. The sensation was familiar and frightening, threatening to tear her apart at the seams and throw her down and away from what she thought she could be.

Just then and in the middle of her lunge, she tried to stop. For a moment she thought she'd managed, but it was already too late: the entire length of her body hit the pulpit with such force that she was thrown across the room.

A flare of pain, the torn wall rug in her room. The floor rushing up to meet her, her father the king standing over her, his face red with rage, hand open and warm and reddening with the force of his backhand, the crash of her chair and the crash of her head against the floor --

"I shan't," the princess said. And then again: "I _shan't_."

She remained there on the floor, for it was easier than standing up. It was best to lie still and not move until she got her bearings back, she knew she would only fall back down. 

"What's going on?" the sentinel asked, reminding the princess that she was not alone in the chapel. When he said, "Hey, you!", the princess still did not pay him any attention.

There was a moment or two of silence in which only the man's breathing could be heard echoing loudly throughout the hall. The princess could hear a shuffle, then, and some steps, and even the creaking of wood as the sentinel leant his weight on the pulpit.

Once upon a time, when she was a small child, the princess had described her future husband to her parents. He would have golden hair and a majestic nose, and he would be tall and brave and smart, and he would love her and she would love him. Her father the king had laughed.

Her father had not been laughing when she'd told him she would not marry the man that he'd chosen for her.

She heard footsteps again: hesitant and slow. She could smell the sentinel's dread as he came closer, and still she did not care.

"Hey," the sentinel said again. His voice now was calmer, slower, and terrified. "Are you you again?"

"No," replied the princess. "I'm dead."

The sentinel's fear had grown stronger. He'd been told by a trustworthy source that if he survived three nights in the chapel, he would free the princess from her grim existence. The king had paid him handsomely for every night that he lived, and promised him half the country in return for retrieving the princess safe, alive and whole.

"Oh," was all he said.

They stayed together for some time yet, until the princess found she would like to stand again. She was surprised when the sentinel offered his hand in help, and surprised herself even further when she took it.

"You should go," she told him. "And please, don't come back."

The sentinel looked at her, opened his mouth as if to say something, but swallowed his words and nodded instead. "I'm sorry I couldn't help."

The princess smiled at him sadly. "So am I."


End file.
